“Then it’s a good thing Stephen isn’t going to marry her, isn’t it?” Felix said.
Fleur said, “Felix, you’re such a blight. Pick your favorite and quit sniping at me.”
“Oh, the Lemeria,” Felix said. “Stephen’s thick as thieves with that pompous twit.”
Fleur and Simon would keep him from getting in a fight if it could be done at all. I faded back. He’d get annoyed with me if I stuck around too much longer, said he didn’t like me breathing down his neck. Of course, it wasn’t like I had anybody else I could go talk to, but I think that was part of what pissed him off.
So I did what I’d been getting damn good at and just moved through the crowd. I tried to stay in sight of Felix’s red hair, but otherwise I didn’t even care where I went. It didn’t matter. The trick was to keep people from noticing me particularly. That had been really hard at first, when everybody acted like I had plague or lice or something, but I’d been trailing around after Felix for quite a while now, and I hadn’t bit nobody yet. People were getting good at ignoring me, and I sure as fuck wasn’t listening to them, just trying to keep moving so I wouldn’t have to think.
Finally, my bad leg aching, I stopped and leaned against King Richard’s pedestal. I figured a maybe-fratricide was good company for me. That’s where Thaddeus found me.
“Mildmay! There you are!” So he’d been looking for me, and that was worrisome for a start. Him and Felix had been friends once, but they weren’t no more, so what the fuck did he want with me?
But it wasn’t like he’d tell me if I asked, so I just said, “Evening, Lord Thaddeus,” and tried to sound more or less like I meant it.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you—how is Gideon taking the news from the Bastion?”
Like we were all friends or something. “You mean General Mercator croaking?”
“And the promise of amnesty.”
He hadn’t even looked disapproving at my language the way hocuses always did. He wanted something. I said, careful-like, “Well, he ain’t in no hurry to go back.”
“No, I’m certain he’s not.” He tried again. “What has he said about it?”
“Nothing to me.”
“But surely you’ve heard him and Felix discussing it.” Bright, bright eyes, like a buzzard waiting for a coyote to die.
“They don’t do most of their talking out loud.” Which was only sort of true, but it’d do for Thaddeus.
He gave me a look, like he was wondering if I was really that stupid or if I was blocking him on purpose. You go on and wonder, asshole, I thought. I could play this game all night if I had to.
One thing you could say about Thaddeus de Lalage. He wasn’t a quitter. He said, quiet and pretending to be casual, “They’re all spies, you know.”
“Um,” I said.
“Eusebian wizards. They can’t help it. You shouldn’t trust any of those who haven’t taken our oaths.”
Meaning Gideon, of course, who hadn’t taken the Mirador’s oaths because Thaddeus had made a ruckus and got half the Curia on his side with it.
Now, I didn’t know what Thaddeus’s thing with the Bastion was—why he hated ’em so much he couldn’t see straight. And I didn’t want to know. What I did know was about witch-hunts and Keeper teaching us all how to recognize hocuses from the Mirador and what we should do if we saw one. The first thing was to get the fuck out of the way. The second was to run—and when she said run, she meant it—to the nearest hocus we knew and tell ’em to get their head down. Keeper charged for most everything she did in the Lower City, but never for that. And it didn’t seem to me like there was enough space between They’re all spies and They’re all filthy heretics.
But it also didn’t seem like that was a smart thing to say to Thaddeus. So I just nodded and kept my mouth shut.
“Gideon lies like an angel,” Thaddeus said, and his hand caught my biceps. Hard. Now, I could’ve made him let go of me, but that was asking for a whole different kind of trouble, and with Felix in the mood he was in, I didn’t think more trouble was what anybody needed. Besides, I knew what the Mirador thought of me. Some days it was like I could feel the smug ghost of Cerberus Cresset padding around behind me, a knife sticking out of his chest and blood all over everything. So I stood there and listened to Thaddeus, knowing he was only talking to me because he didn’t dare say this shit to Felix. “It was why Major Goliath valued him so highly. And maybe still does.”
He was watching me now, slyly, wanting to see his bolts hit home. Even if I had believed him, I wouldn’t’ve given him that, so I just looked back at him. He hadn’t actually asked a question, and I wasn’t volunteering nothing.
After a moment, he let go of me, almost with a push. “I’m watching,” he said, and he was angry, so he must’ve figured out I was stonewalling after all. “And you can tell him that.” He stalked off, as mad as if I’d been insulting his friends instead of the other way ’round.
I reckoned it was a good time to go find Felix. Because suddenly I felt like I really needed just to see him. They were getting ready to start the dancing anyway, and I wanted to be sure my spot on the sidelines would be okay with him. For all that he didn’t want me with him, it really pissed him off when he couldn’t find me. So we went together along the lines of spindly Jecquardin chairs, and I was just about to say, “This one’ll do fine,” when I realized he wasn’t paying attention.
He’d stopped dead in his tracks and was staring at two men arguing a little farther down the line. One was a tallish, heavy-set flashie, with one of them blank well-bred faces that don’t mean nothing. I didn’t think he could be the one Felix was staring at like a sheep. The other man was clearly one of the fancy hookers who cater to the flashies. If you asked me to explain how it was clear, I don’t think I could, but he wasn’t a flashie and he wasn’t a hocus, and he sure as fuck wasn’t an ordinary servant, since the coat he was wearing, mulberry with silver embroidery, cost at least as much as Felix’s.
Even at this distance, he looked a little old for a hooker. I was guessing he was Felix’s age or better. He was a small guy, no more than five-foot-six, and he looked about as heavy-fleshed as a bird. He’d braided his hair down to the nape and then let it fall to his waist, black as sin. The ribbon tying it was mulberry, too, a couple shades lighter than his coat. His skin was pale, like Kolkhis’s, with those cold blue undertones that made her look some mornings like the world’s most beautiful corpse. This guy just looked tired. Kolkhis always claimed— and I never had decided if she was joking or not—that her coloring showed she descended from the ancient Emperors of the West.
I was just thinking, Oh come on, Felix, please don’t know this guy, when the hooker turned away from the flashie, full-face to us. His eye caught Felix’s. And then he was staring, just like Felix was.
Felix snapped himself out of it and said, in a perfectly normal, cheerful voice, “Well, I’ll be damned. Vincent, is that you?”
The hooker’s eyes widened. Then he came toward us. “Felix! Merciful powers, I never imagined I would see you again.” He extended his hand. His nails were long and lacquered black, another sign of a high-class hooker.
The two of them shook hands. Then Felix laughed and said, “Damn propriety!” and hugged him. The hooker hugged him back, his eyes bright.
“I thought you were dead,” he said to Felix. “I couldn’t imagine that you would survive that man.”
“I nearly didn’t. But what happened to you?”
The hooker sighed, and his shoulders sagged. “It is a very long and boring story and certainly not suitable for a soirée.”
“Could you come visit me tomorrow afternoon?”
Shit, I thought. That was his research day, and normally nobody could fuck with that.
The hooker stood and thought it over. “I am in the service of Lord Ivo Polydorius. I would have to ask.”
“I could send you a fancy invitation,” Felix said, teasing and serious both at the same time, “on my best gilt-e
dged paper. If I can find it, I’ll even seal it with my signet.”
The hooker gave him a smile, and for a second he looked way younger. “That would be a great help.”
“Done. I’ll send Mildmay with it—gracious, my manners! Vincent, this is my brother, Mildmay Foxe. Mildmay, this is Vincent Demabrien. I knew him when we were boys.”
“Charmed,” said Vincent Demabrien.
“Yeah,” I said. Felix kicked my right ankle, hard. “I mean, it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Demabrien.” We shook hands. I didn’t think Mr. Demabrien had missed the byplay, but he didn’t say nothing about it. Good manners, anyway.
“I have to get back,” he said, with a jerk of his head to where the flashie was standing. “If the invitation arrives before court, I may have time to talk him around.”
“Marvelous,” Felix said and gave him the full-force, five-alarm smile—not to charm him, but just because he liked him. Felix had never smiled that way at me.
“Honestly,” Felix said when Mr. Demabrien was out of earshot, “I could get better manners out of a hatrack than I can out of you. Will this chair suit your lordship?”
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
He swanned off to charm Fleur or Lunette or Andromachy into dancing with him. I sat down and put my head in my hands.
Mehitabel
Perhaps an hour and a half into the dancing, Felix approached me, swept a low, magnificent bow, and said, “Will you dance with me, Madame Parr?”
“I don’t know. What’s your ulterior motive?”
He laughed. “I want to talk with you. Come on, Tabby, I miss your shining wit.”
“My susceptibility to flattery, you mean,” I said, and he laughed again. I realized that he wasn’t drunk, as I’d initially suspected, simply ebullient. “All right. You win.”
Felix was a surprisingly good dancer, as long as you never made the critical error of complimenting him on it. After a moment, I asked, “So how do you come to be on such good terms with Ivo Polydorius’s light of love?” That was the question occupying at least half the people in the Hall of the Chimeras; speculation was rampant.
“Don’t bother with tact, do you?”
“It’d be wasted on you, sunshine. Come on, spill.”
“We were boys together,” he said negligently.
Considering what very little I knew of Felix Harrowgate’s childhood, that raised more questions than it answered. But he clearly wasn’t going to tell me, and in any event I’d just caught sight of Vulpes in the crowd. His spell must have slipped. Got you, you little weasel, I thought, and said, “Felix?”
“In your arms, Tabby.”
“Don’t look like you’re looking, but who’s the wizard standing by King Cyprian? The one in the mustard-colored coat?”
“Isaac Garamond,” Felix said without looking at all. “Why?”
My heart was suddenly pounding nauseously in my chest. “He’s from the Bastion, you know.”
“Yes, I’m well aware.”
“No. I mean, from the Bastion.”
“What do you—ah. Should I ask why you know, or why you’re telling me?”
“Don’t,” I said, and I knew he could feel the cold sweat starting on my palms. “Please.”
We were silent for several measures before he said thoughtfully, “I’d always imagined you were the type to laugh at a blackmailer.”
“It’s not me. There’s someone . . . someone I love, and I can’t ...”
“You’ve got considerably heavier cannons than me in your arsenal these days.”
“It won’t help. I know how Eusebian wizards communicate. And how fast. And it wouldn’t take . . .” I wasn’t faking my distress, although I was giving into it more than I normally would have.
“You must love this person very much,” Felix said.
I couldn’t answer that, but said simply, “I can’t risk him. Felix, please. I told you because you need to know, but Garamond’s only gathering information. Just—be careful what you say to him. And don’t tell anyone. Please.”
“I’m surprised you trusted me enough to tell me,” he remarked, that negligent tone again, the one that meant he was hiding pain. “Given my past history.”
“I do you the honor of thinking you learn from your mistakes, ” I said stiffly, matching bleakness for bleakness.
“Thank you,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it. Then I felt the sudden increase of tension in all the long bones of his already tense body. “I believe our tête-à-tête, delightful though it has been, is about to be ended. Here comes your swain.”
“My . . . oh God, Felix, must you?”
He was laughing at me as he released my hands and bowed extravagantly to Stephen. But he mouthed silently, I promise, just as he turned away, and even if it was foolish of me, I believed him.
Stephen was in a mood to be possessive; I’d never been danced with so heavily in my life. I wasn’t in a mood to put up with it and said, “Surely you don’t imagine Felix would be poaching on your preserves?”
He snorted. “No, it’s only my brother Lord Felix steals.”
There was nothing I could say to that; another turn and Stephen said, “Every damn puppy in the room is making eyes at you.”
“They can hardly make anything else,” I said reasonably, but that, if anything, seemed to increase his anger. Deliberately, coldly, I imagined telling this glowering bear that I spied for the Bastion because they held the life of the man I loved.
He’d send me to the sanguette. And Louis Goliath would tell Hallam I was dead and watch dispassionately as his grief destroyed whatever was left of him. And nothing in the Bastion would change.
I shook off that future and said tartly, “If you bruise me, my lord, you will be looking for another actress.”
That reached him. He said, “Oh—sorry,” and his grip eased.
“I accepted your invitation. And your terms along with it.” And because the conversation with Felix was still fresh to the point of rawness, I added, “I do have my own kind of honor.”
The basilisk eyes caught mine, revealing, as ever, nothing of what Stephen thought. Then he nodded. “I will remember.”
We finished the waltz in silence, each alone with our own dragons.
Part Three
Chapter 10
Mildmay
The Polydorius suite was in the Mirador’s high-rent district, up there with the Emarthii and the Valerii. The door had their crest carved and gilded on it, a sea serpent all coiled back on itself because the Polydorii claimed descent from the last true king of Cymellune. The gilding looked fresh, and I wondered just how heavily they were all banking on the girl catching Lord Stephen; like Felix said, there wasn’t no way she was going to. If there had been an excuse in the world that Felix would have bought, I would’ve lost the letter, because I didn’t want to do this, didn’t want it so bad I could taste it, thick and hot in the back of my throat. But nobody particularly cared what I did or didn’t want, and Felix had talked at me for half an hour before he’d let me leave, telling me all the things I was supposed to do and all the things I wasn’t.
I knocked on the door. It was opened by a liveried servant. I ducked my head a little, the way Felix had told me to, and said, “I have a letter for Lord Ivo Polydorius.”
“I beg your pardon?” he said, in the sort of flashie accent that shatters glass.
Fuck. I said it again, slower, and after a second he decided to admit he’d understood me. “Very well,” he said.
I handed it over and said, slow and careful, but still mushy, “Lord Felix hopes for a prompt response.” It was Felix’s phrasing, and I didn’t dare change it, because he’d know if I did. Somehow. And it would piss him off, because he was like that.
The servant nodded. I wondered if he’d really understood me or if he just didn’t want to stand out here and play charades ’til he did. But the door swung shut and I started away from it, almost wanting to sing with relief, and I figured at least the word “pr
ompt” had probably come out pretty clear, and the rest of it was just sort of padding, anyway.
A voice hissed, behind me, “Mr. Foxe!”
I turned around, way too fast, and had to stagger sideways to keep from falling over. It was Mr. Demabrien, standing in front of a door two doors down from where I had been. He waved me over. He was in a hurry, and as I got closer I could see he was frightened.
“He won’t let me come,” he said when I was close enough to hear him whisper. “I know he won’t, although he hasn’t said so yet. But I have a letter for your . . . for Felix.” He handed it to me, and I wondered which word it was he’d changed his mind about. “Brother” or “master”?
I stuck the letter in my inside coat pocket, gave him the same sort of nod the servant had given me, and started away. He caught at my sleeve.
Felix is the one who hates being touched, but I didn’t want Vincent Demabrien’s hand on my arm. I gave him a look, and he jerked back like I’d burned him. “You’ll give it to him, won’t you?” he asked. “You won’t . . .”
“He’ll get it,” I said. I didn’t care if Mr. Demabrien could understand me or not. This time when I walked away he didn’t try to stop me.
I didn’t give Felix the letter before court because there wasn’t time for him to read it, and if he knew about it, he’d just drive me and him crazy by fidgeting while we were supposed to be paying attention. Mehitabel was there, just off the dais, wearing the longest rope of pearls I’d ever seen in my life. I tried not to look at her, but my eyes kept sliding back that way. Let it go, I thought. It turned into a kind of prayer, or something, like the chants that some of the cults use to keep sinful thoughts away. I didn’t care if my thoughts were sinful. I just wanted to stop thinking.
I gave Felix the letter the instant we were out of the Hall of the Chimeras. For a wonder, he didn’t ask me why I’d waited, and he didn’t stop to try and read it right there, although I could tell he wanted to, the way his fingers twitched across the sealing wax.
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